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The internet has a LOT to say about one couple in Netflix’s Ashley Madison doc

Simran Singh
Simran Singh
|
May 29 2024, 7:04 pm
The internet has a LOT to say about one couple in Netflix’s Ashley Madison doc
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal/ Netflix

If you’ve watched Netflix’s newest docu-series, Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal, you’ve probably been left with your jaw on the floor. The series touches on everything from lying cheaters to a shady CEO to cyber criminals who exposed secrets that destroyed marriages. But there is one couple featured in the documentary in particular that has got the internet talking.

Heads up, if you haven’t watched yet, you’ve been warned that spoilers are ahead.

The three-part documentary follows the rise and fall of the Ashley Madison Agency, the Toronto-based online adultery website that was targeted at married people who wanted to have an affair.

The company was started in 2011 and charged a fee (but only for its male users) to connect with other married people who didn’t want to leave their marriage but wanted to cheat. The company promised it would keep all interactions discrete, claiming to use high-security measures.

Ashley Madison grew in popularity but really took off when Noel Biderman became the company’s new CEO. Biderman and his childhood friend, Evan Back, took the adultery platform to the next level and boosted membership while gaining a lot of media attention, especially with its eyebrow-raising slogan: “Life is short. Have an affair.”

While the media and the public heavily criticized Ashley Madison for encouraging dishonestly in relationships and potentially breaking up marriages, the popularity of the site continued to skyrocket.

In 2015, the platform claimed to have 37 million users in over 40 countries.

But soon, all of Ashley Madison’s success would come crashing down, exposing the lies and secrets of its users and the company.

In the same year, a group of hackers called The Impact Team broke into Ashley Madison’s database, threatening to publicly leak the identities and information of its users if it did not shut down its operations. It turned out that the company’s security measures weren’t so secure after all.

Ashley Madison called in a team of cyber security experts to determine who was behind the attack. However, the Impact Team remained true to its threats and released all of Ashley Madison’s data to the public and the media.

It was a complete disaster for the company and its thousands of users whose secrets were now exposed to the world.

The leaked data revealed many high-profile site users, including politicians and reality TV stars.

One of those exposed in the data breach was Sam Radar, and the documentary closely follows the story of him and his wife, Nia. While the series features a number of couples, Sam and Nia have really got the internet talking because of their rollercoaster relationship.

They married in their early 20s and lived a seemingly normal life in Texas. The couple grew their family, worked good jobs, and were devout Christians.

Their lives changed when they uploaded a video to YouTube of themselves singing “Love Is An Open Door,” the popular song from the hit Disney movie Frozen, to their daughter. The video went viral and began Sam and Nia’s journey of being social media influencers.

Their videos focused on their family and faith, but Sam was hiding a dark secret: he was one of Ashley Madison’s thousands of users.

Sam eventually fessed up to Nia about being on the site and being mentioned in the data leak, and their story took many twists and turns from there.

Somehow, despite Sam’s dishonesty, the couple is still together, and many who watched the documentary had a lot to say about them.

Sam and Nia have shared their thoughts about being featured in the documentary on their social media channels, and it seems that they’ve been enjoying the attention.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Nia Rader (@niagirl9)

As for the fate of the Ashley Madison platform, the data breach did a number on the company.

CEO Noel Biderman was exposed as a cheater (no surprise there), and it turns out that the site never really had as many female users as it claimed. Many of the “women” that men were engaging with on the site were actually bots.

The documentary uncovers a lot more about Ashley Madison and the people who were named in the leak. There were enormous legal repercussions for the company, but it somehow continues to operate as an adultery site to this very day.

Have you watched the series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Simran SinghSimran Singh
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